Traditionally, gaming systems accommodated a limited number of players, such as 1-4 players. A recent trend in gaming systems is to provide capabilities to facilitate gaming among multiple players over a network, such as Internet-based online gaming. These online gaming systems allow players to compete with other players, regardless of their geographic location.
The game titles available on the market today can be generally classified into two categories. The first category is online games which allow a user to play the game against one or more players online. The users may build a list of preferred online players (or friends' list). The users may also send and receive messages (such as invitations to play the online game). The second category is offline games that are generally played by one or more users with access to the same game console only.
One shortcoming of today's game titles and online services is that if a user is playing an offline game, that user is excluded from receiving online messages such as an invitation to play an online game. This limits a user's ability to play against a preferred group of players.